Frankly. you're right (and don't deserve the flamebait mods). And the ironic part is that Samba is one of the best run projects around. I have tremendous admiration for the entire team, I think they're some of the sharpest folks in the community. I admire Jeremy Allison almost more than I admire Linus, he's savvy and quotable. It's an excellent project that is solid, reliable very useful, and gains a lot of admiration for OSS in general. And what they're doing is hard. And yet I agree with you that Samba needs to die. (After helping to kill Windows, of course.)
But I'm not really worried. These guys are sharp, and after it becomes time for Samba to die (which will not be as soon as most of us might like), I'm sure they'll all find other interesting things to work on. And in the mean time, they seem quite happy to work on this currently-still-very-important software for us. Kudos to all the Samba team.
Your email address MUST be correct to process your registration.
It only has to be valid long enough for them to send you a confirmation email. Using a throwaway address is more than good enough. How do I know? Because it worked for me(tm)!:)
were they that short on talent that they didn't have an original game idea?
No shorter than the rest of the gaming industry. When's the last time you saw an original game out there? (See this article for example.)
Just not blatant clones of other people's ideas and content.
Blatant clones of other people's ideas and content are the meat and potatoes of the gaming industry. Furthermore, the right to create such clones was firmly established in the early eighties, when the owners of Pacman lost their suit against a clone maker (I was working for a game developer at the time, and we were following that case closely, and cheered at the resolution). Blizzard was obviously picking a fight with free software developers because they knew they'd lose if they took any anyone with any money at all.
I'm pretty dubious about their (Blizzard's) claims to the entire *Craft namespace too. That's a pretty broad claim to make, and I'm not sure it would have ever stood up in court. Good thing they had some penniless developers - who were doing it just for the fun of it - to kick around, huh?
Otherwise it forces evry commercial distributor of GPL'ed software to make a full code-review of the software to ensure that they don't distribute source the what to keep their rights to
No, it makes a big difference whether you know or not what you were doing. If someone is distributing code under the GPL that they're not allowed to, then they can just stop, and there's unlikely to be a problem. The problem is when you knowingly continue to distribute the code (as SCO is doing). This is what's going to put SCO in the hot water. They still have the Linux kernel source available for download.
This is an easy one to answer: To allow SCO to continue to spew out the mouth and further damn themselves in a court of law.
I'm not so sure this works. IANAL, but my understanding is that courts tend to take the position that if you could have done something, you should have done something, and if you didn't, then you don't deserve extra damages. This, by the way, is going to be one of the holes in SCO's case. If anyone is infringing on their "intellectual property", they should have taken steps to prevent further violations, rather than trying to milk it. This will probably count against them even if they do, against all laws of logic and common-sense, manage to pull off something resembling a victory.
As for IBM, the first step is: file a suit. The second step is: ask for an injunction. They're just now reaching the first step. I expect the second step will be taken soon.
Last place I worked used different channels for different things. Everyone used email. Managers and development staff used a lot of IM. And network ops tended to use chat (IRC/ICB). The IM is good when you need to get a specific person, the chat programs are good when you need (e.g.) to talk to whoever's on duty now. Email can do either (if you set up lists and such), but is slower (but more reliable). Basically, I think it all depends on what you're doing.
The GPL of the QT license is all due to [Red Hat]...
Bzzt, sorry, it was Joseph Carter (knghtbrd) of the Debian project who did the most work to solve that situation. RH mostly ignored KDE, since they had Gnome. Debian was the most interested in being able to offer and support both.
Also, a lot of people (including, I think, Trolltech) took Debian's criticisms of the QT license a lot more seriously than RH's, since RH was perceived as having a conflict of interest (due to the fact that Gnome was perceived as their baby).
and they were the only gnome player for the longest time.
Again, Debian has supported Gnome from day one. They even donated some of their meager funds in the early days to help get Gnome off the ground.
Red Hat are good guys, no question. They've done a lot for the community, and they've been surprisingly willing to cooperate with Debian, who would appear to be a competitor in some sense. There was even one RH developer (Havoc) who was (for a while) a major Debian developer too. And RH never objected to him sharing his time between the two. This is clearly a company that gets what FLOSS is all about. RH deserves kudos and applause for a lot of the stuff they've done. But not for the stuff they didn't do.:)
Debian... exactly what I picture when I think of a Dynamic Constantly Moving and Developing Product.
If you were running Debian Sid (unstable) as I am, you'd...know that Debian is a process, not a product!:)
It's not called "unstable" because it breaks frequently (in fact, in four years, I've seen notable breakage only twice), but because it changes on a daily basis. How much more "dynamic", "constantly moving" and "developing" do you want?
Obvious you didn't read the linked article, or you would have seen section 2, where it explains why users don't need licenses.
If they weren't copying anything, how did it get on their hard drive?
This point is explicitely covered in section 2 of the linked paper. Too bad you didn't read it before spouting off. In the case of software, copyright law specifically allows loading the software.
Lets just rename the site, "Slashdot: News for Nerds, who pretend to be lawyers."
Amazing irony here, where we have some clueless twit contradicting Eben Moglen (who is a lawyer), and then complaining how other slashdotters are pretending to be lawyers. Pot, I'd like you to meet Kettle.
I cannot stand stupid companies that are to lazy to make a standards compliant website.
Actually, you don't know whether or not it's standards-compliant until you try spoofing the user agent, and see whether or not it works after that. But yeah, I agree, people who try to tell me what browser to use don't usually get my business.
Extra chromosome != male. Extra chromosome = wuh-oh.
That was my initial reaction too. But in fact, men have an extra kind of chromosome (Y), which women lack, so the statement is not entirely unreasonable. Even if it is a little disconcerting.:)
Yeah, but the variable is just a label. The actual type in question is either int or int*.
True, but you can look at it another way (and I prefer to, because it makes things more consistent). If you have:
int *foo, bar;
then you've declared "*foo" is an int, which implies that "foo" is a pointer to int.
I also always use "int const" rather than "const int", because I think it's more consistent. So, obviously I'm a bit obsessive about some of this stuff.:)
following that precedent would mean that the OS should be called GNU/X/Apache/GNOME/KDE/BSD/Linux
Really? I've got 5 linux boxes here, let's see how much sense that name makes:
GNU: yup, GNU libraries and utilities are installed on all my boxes. They won't even boot without those. In fact, there's more GNU code installed than kernel code. I'll go for that one.
X: No X on three machines. Doesn't make any sense to add X to the name.
Apache: No Apache on any of 'em (I'm using boa for internal stuff, thinking of setting up aolserver for an outward-facing webserver).
GNOME: No gnome installed anywhere.
KDE: No KDE installed anywhere.
BSD: Tiny amounts of BSD code are installed. Unlike the GNU code, though, this is tiny compared to the kernel. Could go either way.
Sendmail: you left this one out, but no matter, I wouldn't run sendmail on a bet. It's not even a standard component on the system I use (exim is, sendmail is an "extra" optional package).
So, GNU/Linux makes sense, GNU/BSD/Linux makes sense, but isn't quite as justifiable, and the rest of that junk you mentioned makes no sense whatsover.
Well, anyway, I still call 'em "my Linux boxes", but at least I don't try to pretend that I'm morally superior by rejecting "GNU". I'm just lazy!:)
The fs compression code that MS stole from Stacker, Inc., and was sued over, and lost, is a better example. Nor is that the only case where MS was found to have stolen proprietary code. So, given that, it's not surprising that MS feels that free software developers would steal; after all, they (MS) clearly do so without hestitation, why would they expect any better of anyone else?
The flip side of this, of course, is that it's much harder for free software developers to steal and get away with it. Proprietary code isn't open to public review and scrutiny, so copyright violations can only be spotted by reverse-engineering, which is difficult and unreliable. If you're worried about copyright violations, stay away from proprietary code, and you'll have a much better chance of being safe!:)
i would say that open code that must remain open is less open.
I would say that people who can't enslave and torture their neighbors are less free than people who can.:)
Freedom is inherently paradoxical -- if you have the freedom to lose your freedom, then you're potentially not free (once you lose your freedom), but if you don't have the freedom to lose your freedom, then that's clearly a freedom you don't have, so you're not absolutely free. Or to put it another way, you can't have both the freedom to swing your fist wherever you like and the freedom to have an unbroken nose. (Unless you're the only one with freedom -- but we usually call that situation "dictatorship").
Anyway, I'm not going to get into the GPL is/isn't "truly" free. I'm just pointing out that absolute freedom is a myth, so any argument that relies on ideals of absolute freedom is flawed. Beyond a certain point (and I think the GPL is well within those bounds), I think it's all good, and I really don't care. I'm able to sympathize with both the BSDL advocates and the GPL advocates without necessarily agreeing with either side. And that's because I have the freedom to form my own opinions, or even reserve judgement, if I want.:)
Anyone who knows what they're doing doesn't wait for slashdot to report vulnerabilities (in anything). Anyone who doesn't know what they're doing probably won't apply any patches in any case. So, that leaves laughing and pointing at MS, and chanting "Apple, Apple, Apple" or "Linux, Linux, Linux" as the only reasonable excuse for posting the article.:)
Dave Matthews and Radiohead [...] have always been in support of file-sharing...
Not of everything. Like most taper/trader-friendly bands, they ask that you only trade unofficial concert recordings, not actual albums. In fact, while I'm not a fan of DMB or Phish, word on the grapevine is that both bands have changed their policies to be more restrictive recently, and that this may be because too many fools aren't following the quite-generous rules: DON'T TRADE OFFICIAL RELEASES (and don't charge money, or try to make money with ads).
As for Radiohead, they seem to have a policy more like Metallica -- taping is allowed, but trading is on a don't-ask-don't-tell basis. However, I'm sure they're no happier than any of these other bands to have their official releases traded.
I just noticed that there's a bug in that approach. On days when the time changes, you might end up running the job twice or not at all.
However, there's another simple solution. Again, based on the fact that there's really only two times that can be local midnight. Simply run a script like this at the earlier of the two times:
if [ $(TZ=$1 date +%H) = 23 ]; then # it's 11pm in timezone $1
sleep 1h # wait till midnight
# (on some systems, you might need "sleep 3600") fi run_my_midnight_task
Note that hacking cron to respect timezones will result in the same bug as my earlier approach. So, this approach is really the cleanest I can see.
For each time zone, there's only going to be certain GMT times that can be "local" midnight. (Usually two.) So, at those times, you run a script that checks the "local" time, and, if it is actually midnight, runs the job! Simple, clean, sweet.
There's a tiny amount of overhead for running the check script at times that aren't local midnight, but that should be completely negligible.
Slashdot Mirror
At least, nice solid ones do. And that's all I have to say about that! :)
Frankly. you're right (and don't deserve the flamebait mods). And the ironic part is that Samba is one of the best run projects around. I have tremendous admiration for the entire team, I think they're some of the sharpest folks in the community. I admire Jeremy Allison almost more than I admire Linus, he's savvy and quotable. It's an excellent project that is solid, reliable very useful, and gains a lot of admiration for OSS in general. And what they're doing is hard. And yet I agree with you that Samba needs to die. (After helping to kill Windows, of course.)
But I'm not really worried. These guys are sharp, and after it becomes time for Samba to die (which will not be as soon as most of us might like), I'm sure they'll all find other interesting things to work on. And in the mean time, they seem quite happy to work on this currently-still-very-important software for us. Kudos to all the Samba team.
Your email address MUST be correct to process your registration.
:)
It only has to be valid long enough for them to send you a confirmation email. Using a throwaway address is more than good enough. How do I know? Because it worked for me(tm)!
were they that short on talent that they didn't have an original game idea?
No shorter than the rest of the gaming industry. When's the last time you saw an original game out there? (See this article for example.)
Just not blatant clones of other people's ideas and content.
Blatant clones of other people's ideas and content are the meat and potatoes of the gaming industry. Furthermore, the right to create such clones was firmly established in the early eighties, when the owners of Pacman lost their suit against a clone maker (I was working for a game developer at the time, and we were following that case closely, and cheered at the resolution). Blizzard was obviously picking a fight with free software developers because they knew they'd lose if they took any anyone with any money at all.
I'm pretty dubious about their (Blizzard's) claims to the entire *Craft namespace too. That's a pretty broad claim to make, and I'm not sure it would have ever stood up in court. Good thing they had some penniless developers - who were doing it just for the fun of it - to kick around, huh?
But I would leave out Red Hat and SuSE too. Linux doesn't "mean" any companies! Linux means a stable, reliable, nimble, free OS.
:)
Of course, my years of using and contributing to Debian (which is not a company) may have skewed my viewpoint somewhat.
Otherwise it forces evry commercial distributor of GPL'ed software to make a full code-review of the software to ensure that they don't distribute source the what to keep their rights to
No, it makes a big difference whether you know or not what you were doing. If someone is distributing code under the GPL that they're not allowed to, then they can just stop, and there's unlikely to be a problem. The problem is when you knowingly continue to distribute the code (as SCO is doing). This is what's going to put SCO in the hot water. They still have the Linux kernel source available for download.
This is an easy one to answer: To allow SCO to continue to spew out the mouth and further damn themselves in a court of law.
I'm not so sure this works. IANAL, but my understanding is that courts tend to take the position that if you could have done something, you should have done something, and if you didn't, then you don't deserve extra damages. This, by the way, is going to be one of the holes in SCO's case. If anyone is infringing on their "intellectual property", they should have taken steps to prevent further violations, rather than trying to milk it. This will probably count against them even if they do, against all laws of logic and common-sense, manage to pull off something resembling a victory.
As for IBM, the first step is: file a suit. The second step is: ask for an injunction. They're just now reaching the first step. I expect the second step will be taken soon.
Last place I worked used different channels for different things. Everyone used email. Managers and development staff used a lot of IM. And network ops tended to use chat (IRC/ICB). The IM is good when you need to get a specific person, the chat programs are good when you need (e.g.) to talk to whoever's on duty now. Email can do either (if you set up lists and such), but is slower (but more reliable). Basically, I think it all depends on what you're doing.
The GPL of the QT license is all due to [Red Hat]...
:)
Bzzt, sorry, it was Joseph Carter (knghtbrd) of the Debian project who did the most work to solve that situation. RH mostly ignored KDE, since they had Gnome. Debian was the most interested in being able to offer and support both.
Also, a lot of people (including, I think, Trolltech) took Debian's criticisms of the QT license a lot more seriously than RH's, since RH was perceived as having a conflict of interest (due to the fact that Gnome was perceived as their baby).
and they were the only gnome player for the longest time.
Again, Debian has supported Gnome from day one. They even donated some of their meager funds in the early days to help get Gnome off the ground.
Red Hat are good guys, no question. They've done a lot for the community, and they've been surprisingly willing to cooperate with Debian, who would appear to be a competitor in some sense. There was even one RH developer (Havoc) who was (for a while) a major Debian developer too. And RH never objected to him sharing his time between the two. This is clearly a company that gets what FLOSS is all about. RH deserves kudos and applause for a lot of the stuff they've done. But not for the stuff they didn't do.
Debian ... exactly what I picture when I think of a Dynamic Constantly Moving and Developing Product.
:)
If you were running Debian Sid (unstable) as I am, you'd...know that Debian is a process, not a product!
It's not called "unstable" because it breaks frequently (in fact, in four years, I've seen notable breakage only twice), but because it changes on a daily basis. How much more "dynamic", "constantly moving" and "developing" do you want?
Obvious you didn't read the linked article, or you would have seen section 2, where it explains why users don't need licenses.
If they weren't copying anything, how did it get on their hard drive?
This point is explicitely covered in section 2 of the linked paper. Too bad you didn't read it before spouting off. In the case of software, copyright law specifically allows loading the software.
Lets just rename the site, "Slashdot: News for Nerds, who pretend to be lawyers."
Amazing irony here, where we have some clueless twit contradicting Eben Moglen (who is a lawyer), and then complaining how other slashdotters are pretending to be lawyers. Pot, I'd like you to meet Kettle.
I cannot stand stupid companies that are to lazy to make a standards compliant website.
Actually, you don't know whether or not it's standards-compliant until you try spoofing the user agent, and see whether or not it works after that. But yeah, I agree, people who try to tell me what browser to use don't usually get my business.
Extra chromosome != male. Extra chromosome = wuh-oh.
:)
That was my initial reaction too. But in fact, men have an extra kind of chromosome (Y), which women lack, so the statement is not entirely unreasonable. Even if it is a little disconcerting.
True, but you can look at it another way (and I prefer to, because it makes things more consistent). If you have: then you've declared "*foo" is an int, which implies that "foo" is a pointer to int.
I also always use "int const" rather than "const int", because I think it's more consistent. So, obviously I'm a bit obsessive about some of this stuff.
following that precedent would mean that the OS should be called GNU/X/Apache/GNOME/KDE/BSD/Linux
:)
Really? I've got 5 linux boxes here, let's see how much sense that name makes:
GNU: yup, GNU libraries and utilities are installed on all my boxes. They won't even boot without those. In fact, there's more GNU code installed than kernel code. I'll go for that one.
X: No X on three machines. Doesn't make any sense to add X to the name.
Apache: No Apache on any of 'em (I'm using boa for internal stuff, thinking of setting up aolserver for an outward-facing webserver).
GNOME: No gnome installed anywhere.
KDE: No KDE installed anywhere.
BSD: Tiny amounts of BSD code are installed. Unlike the GNU code, though, this is tiny compared to the kernel. Could go either way.
Sendmail: you left this one out, but no matter, I wouldn't run sendmail on a bet. It's not even a standard component on the system I use (exim is, sendmail is an "extra" optional package).
So, GNU/Linux makes sense, GNU/BSD/Linux makes sense, but isn't quite as justifiable, and the rest of that junk you mentioned makes no sense whatsover.
Well, anyway, I still call 'em "my Linux boxes", but at least I don't try to pretend that I'm morally superior by rejecting "GNU". I'm just lazy!
The fs compression code that MS stole from Stacker, Inc., and was sued over, and lost, is a better example. Nor is that the only case where MS was found to have stolen proprietary code. So, given that, it's not surprising that MS feels that free software developers would steal; after all, they (MS) clearly do so without hestitation, why would they expect any better of anyone else?
:)
The flip side of this, of course, is that it's much harder for free software developers to steal and get away with it. Proprietary code isn't open to public review and scrutiny, so copyright violations can only be spotted by reverse-engineering, which is difficult and unreliable. If you're worried about copyright violations, stay away from proprietary code, and you'll have a much better chance of being safe!
i would say that open code that must remain open is less open.
:)
:)
I would say that people who can't enslave and torture their neighbors are less free than people who can.
Freedom is inherently paradoxical -- if you have the freedom to lose your freedom, then you're potentially not free (once you lose your freedom), but if you don't have the freedom to lose your freedom, then that's clearly a freedom you don't have, so you're not absolutely free. Or to put it another way, you can't have both the freedom to swing your fist wherever you like and the freedom to have an unbroken nose. (Unless you're the only one with freedom -- but we usually call that situation "dictatorship").
Anyway, I'm not going to get into the GPL is/isn't "truly" free. I'm just pointing out that absolute freedom is a myth, so any argument that relies on ideals of absolute freedom is flawed. Beyond a certain point (and I think the GPL is well within those bounds), I think it's all good, and I really don't care. I'm able to sympathize with both the BSDL advocates and the GPL advocates without necessarily agreeing with either side. And that's because I have the freedom to form my own opinions, or even reserve judgement, if I want.
Anyone who knows what they're doing doesn't wait for slashdot to report vulnerabilities (in anything). Anyone who doesn't know what they're doing probably won't apply any patches in any case. So, that leaves laughing and pointing at MS, and chanting "Apple, Apple, Apple" or "Linux, Linux, Linux" as the only reasonable excuse for posting the article. :)
Dave Matthews and Radiohead [...] have always been in support of file-sharing...
Not of everything. Like most taper/trader-friendly bands, they ask that you only trade unofficial concert recordings, not actual albums. In fact, while I'm not a fan of DMB or Phish, word on the grapevine is that both bands have changed their policies to be more restrictive recently, and that this may be because too many fools aren't following the quite-generous rules: DON'T TRADE OFFICIAL RELEASES (and don't charge money, or try to make money with ads).
As for Radiohead, they seem to have a policy more like Metallica -- taping is allowed, but trading is on a don't-ask-don't-tell basis. However, I'm sure they're no happier than any of these other bands to have their official releases traded.
Too bad i'm gonna have to write a script between each process and cron
No, that's why I made the time zone an argument to the script. So, in the crontab, you just pass the appropriate zone name when you call the script.
The problem with hacking cron to respect local time is that in local time, there is (once a year) a day with two midnights, and a day with none.
I think the best approach is the one I outlined here. Run at the earliest time that might be midnight, and if it's not yet midnight, sleep till it is.
However, there's another simple solution. Again, based on the fact that there's really only two times that can be local midnight. Simply run a script like this at the earlier of the two times:Note that hacking cron to respect timezones will result in the same bug as my earlier approach. So, this approach is really the cleanest I can see.
It's overkill unless you're already working in perl, because date(1) does all that already, and can be used directly from the shell.
No, just a simple test:
For each time zone, there's only going to be certain GMT times that can be "local" midnight. (Usually two.) So, at those times, you run a script that checks the "local" time, and, if it is actually midnight, runs the job! Simple, clean, sweet.
There's a tiny amount of overhead for running the check script at times that aren't local midnight, but that should be completely negligible.